Micromachines (Sep 2020)

Broadband High-Efficiency Grating Couplers for Perfectly Vertical Fiber-to-Chip Coupling Enhanced by Fabry-Perot-like Cavity

  • Zan Zhang,
  • Beiju Huang,
  • Zanyun Zhang,
  • Chuantong Cheng,
  • Bing Bai,
  • Tianxi Gao,
  • Xiaobo Xu,
  • Wenping Gu,
  • Lin Zhang,
  • Hongda Chen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11090859
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 9
p. 859

Abstract

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We propose a broadband high-efficiency grating coupler for perfectly vertical fiber-to-chip coupling. The up-reflection is reduced, hence enhanced coupling efficiency is achieved with the help of a Fabry-Perot-like cavity composed of a silicon nitride reflector and the grating itself. With the theory of the Fabry-Perot cavity, the dimensional parameters of the coupler are investigated. With the optimized parameters, up-reflection in the C-band is reduced from 10.6% to 5%, resulting in an enhanced coupling efficiency of 80.3%, with a 1-dB bandwidth of 58 nm, which covers the entire C-band. The minimum feature size of the proposed structure is over 219 nm, which makes our design easy to fabricate through 248 nm deep-UV lithography, and lowers the fabrication cost. The proposed design has potential in efficient and fabrication-tolerant interfacing applications, between off-chip light sources and integrated chips that can be mass-produced.

Keywords